For a long time, philosophers of science have expressed little interest in the so-called demarcation project that occupied the pioneers of their field, and most now concur that terms like “pseudoscience” cannot be defined in any meaningful way. However, recent years have witnessed a revival of philosophical interest in demarcation. In this paper, I argue that, though the demarcation problem of old leads to a dead-end, the concept of pseudoscience is not going away anytime soon, and deserves a fresh look. (...) My approach proposes to naturalize and down-size the concept, anchoring it in real-life doctrines and fields of inquiry. First, I argue against the definite article “the” in “the demarcation problem”, distinguishing between territorial and normative demarcation, and between different failures and shortcomings in science apart from pseudoscience. Next, I argue that pseudosciences can be fruitfully regarded as simulacra of science, doctrines that are not epistemically warranted but whose proponents try to create the impression that they are. In this element of imitation or mimicry, I argue, lies the clue to their common identity. Despite the huge variety of doctrines and beliefs gathered under the rubric of “pseudoscience”, and the wide range of defects from which they suffer, pseudosciences all engage in similar strategies to create an impression of epistemic warrant. The indirect, symptomatic approach defended here leads to a general characterization of pseudosciences in all domains of inquiry, and to a useful diagnostic tool. (shrink)

The demarcation between science and pseudoscience is a long-standing problem in philosophy of science. Although philosophers have been hesitant to engage in this project since Larry Laudan announce...

What, if anything, is wrong with conspiracy theories (CTs)? A conspiracy refers to a group of people acting in secret to achieve some nefarious goal. Given that the pages of history are full of such plots, however, why are CTs often regarded with suspicion and even disdain? According to “particularism,” the currently dominant view among philosophers, each CT should be evaluated on its own merits and the negative reputation of CTs as a class is wholly undeserved. In this paper, I (...) defend a moderate version of “generalism,” the view that there is indeed something prima facie suspicious about CTs, properly defined, and that they suffer from common epistemic defects. To demarcate legitimate theorizing about real-life conspiracies from “mere conspiracy theories” (in the pejorative sense), I draw on a deep asymmetry between causes and effects in the natural world. Because of their extreme resilience to counterevidence, CTs can be seen as the epistemological equivalent of black holes, in which unwary truth-seekers are drawn, never to escape. Finally, by presenting a generic “recipe” for generating novel CTs around any given event, regardless of the circumstances and the available evidence, I rescue the intuitions beneath colloquial phrases like “That's just a conspiracy theory.”. (shrink)

Definitions of ‘pseudoscience’ are required to heed the established usage of the definiendum by subsuming those cases that are generally considered to be pseudoscientific, and by excluding those that are considered sciences. In this paper I sample the published record to assess the consensus on pseudoscience case classifications. The review finds inconclusive evidence for an overall agreement. However, the frequent usage of a small number of pseudoscience-cases indicates that these are considered paradigms of pseudoscience. I briefly discuss some practical implications (...) of these findings for the pseudoscience demarcation project. (shrink)

What, if anything, is wrong with conspiracy theories? A conspiracy refers to a group of people acting in secret to achieve some nefarious goal. Given that the pages of history are full of such plots, however, why are CTs often regarded with suspicion and even disdain? According to “particularism,” the currently dominant view among philosophers, each CT should be evaluated on its own merits and the negative reputation of CTs as a class is wholly undeserved. In this paper, I defend (...) a moderate version of “generalism,” the view that there is indeed something prima facie suspicious about CTs, properly defined, and that they suffer from common epistemic defects. To demarcate legitimate theorizing about real-life conspiracies from “mere conspiracy theories”, I draw on a deep asymmetry between causes and effects in the natural world. Because of their extreme resilience to counterevidence, CTs can be seen as the epistemological equivalent of black holes, in which unwary truth-seekers are drawn, never to escape. Finally, by presenting a generic “recipe” for generating novel CTs around any given event, regardless of the circumstances and the available evidence, I rescue the intuitions beneath colloquial phrases like “That's just a conspiracy theory.”. (shrink)